Horribly Inappropriate Coping Techniques
by DagonSt
Summary: The status is not quo. Three post-musical drabbles, mild Billy/Hammer in the middle.
1. In which equipment is damaged

Moist lets himself in, edging around a blinking tower holding an envelope by one corner. Doctor Horrible's slumped in an oversized - very oversized - armchair. Making horrible plans, or - from the lack of laptop or even notepad - just wishing the sun wouldn't come up. He hasn't seen the Doctor in a week, his last blog post was three days ago, and then there's the mail.

"Um. Hey. Your certificate?"

You don't drop a certificate of induction into the Evil League of Evil, you just _don't_, so Moist waves it in his probable line of sight, tilted to show the logo. And resists the urge to tap on his goggles to see if he's even awake.

"Great."

Great. C'mon, Doc, c'mon. Take it or risk watermarks... He drops it. "Man, you should get out more. You've got groupies."

"No autographs." Horrible curls even farther back into the gigantic chair. Moist looms by default. "Uh, one of them offered to pick up your dry-cleaning?"

That was worth a wrinkled nose. "I don't have dry-cleaning." And four words, maybe five. Right tone. He even pulls the goggles off for an irritated glare. His eyes are red, but dry.

"It's an example. I'm hoping for one who'll pay your rent."

"Rent."

"Due yesterday?"

Dr. Horrible blinks, laboriously. "Okay. I'll rob a bank. I've got a stun ray, it..." Dr. Horrible trails off, and Moist thinks that the guy's going to fall over when he does get out of that chair, and if they don't get beaten to a pulp he'll be the best-paid henchman in the union.

"You're in my lab," Dr. Horrible says thinly. "Moist, you're in my _lab_. You raise the ambient humidity five degrees just walking _into_ a room and you're standing here talking to me _in my lab_."

And he was wrong, because Dr. Horrible doesn't collapse until he's got Moist out in the hall, and the lab door slammed shut. He leans against it, shaking slightly and glaring like _Moist_ was the one whose lab coat very definitely _does_ need dry-cleaning unless he needs those bloodstains for cloning or something, muttering half-coherently about the phone he'd installed _specifically_ so Moist would never have any reason to_ be_ in his lab. The one that's been off the hook for two weeks now.

"So, which bank?"

Best-paid henchman in the union. He deserves every penny.


	2. In which tradition is broken

"Well, well, well."

"What." He's not wearing the Dr. Horrible costume tonight. He's Billy, in jeans and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled forward. The goggles leave grooves in his face when he wears them.

Captain Hammer smirks. "My doctor told me I should face my fear. I'm afraid of pain. So I think I'll watch _you_ in pain, Doctor Horrible."

It's the stupidest thing he's ever heard. "You can't hit me, I'm not _doing_ anything." Dr. Horrible has been inducted into the Evil League of Evil and stolen a respectable amount of start-up capital. Billy is going for a walk with five dollars in his wallet. And Captain Hammer is a jerk.

"Then call it an advance." Hammer's fist draws back, and Billy doesn't bother focusing on it as he wonders whether it might be easier to just take the beating.

No. He falls down, but it's over a tree root on his way out of the park. Now Captain Hammer will have to kick him to death, and that isn't his trademark so neither of them will be happy. Good. Billy looks over his shoulder and there he is, poised in the perfect center of a streetlamp and scowling in almost the right direction. Does he even _know_ he's posing, or is it reflex?

Carefully, Billy pulls the hood back over his face and rolls over to lean back on his hands. Dark hood, dark jeans, maybe he can just sit here until Captain Hammer goes away. Work out the design for an invisibility ray.

"Afraid of the dark, Captain?" And Captain Hammer jumps. Billy's turn to smile, and he even feels like doing it. "I have _got_ to get a new nemesis. Afraid of pain, afraid of the dark, can't get anyone in bed more than once." He laughs, sharply. "I wonder if Penny - "

Oh, look. Captain Hammer's not afraid of the dark after all. And his superpowers include finding the least comfortable tree-trunk in the park to nail him to. On. Whatever. But he's out of practice with the throttling. Billy takes a barely-constricted breath. "Welcome back." There are rules, and that's as close as he can get to thanking his nemesis for saving him from the end of that thought.

"Take it back."

Ow. "Take what - you're kidding."

"That's not true."

"Like I'd know?"

"I'll prove it."

What? "Prove it?"

Captain Hammer lets go. Billy backs off warily, and perches on the nearest picnic table, prodding at his back to make certain he isn't bleeding anywhere. "You know what I meant was - "

Okay, does he really want to do this? Wrong question - he hasn't really wanted anything since he won admittance to the Evil League of Evil. Does he really want _not _to do it? It can't be worse than getting beat up for the thousandth time. Does he want to let Captain Hammer walk away smug, thinking he rules a world he's barely aware of? No. No, he _really_ doesn't.

"You want to prove you aren't a total failure in bed," he says flatly. "Okay."

Captain Hammer pauses again, then his mouth resolves in the sort of smile he gets when he thinks he's said something clever. "You aren't in costume, Doctor Horrible."

"Not doing this in costume. That's_ weird_. So take off your gloves. And the shirt." Captain Hammer starts stripping, and his first thought is, 'it worked!' and not about how bizarre this is. For him. You hear about nemesis relationships going wrong.

"So," Hammer says with his standard smarmy grin, "your place or -"

He winces - how did he not think of the risk of being bored to death? "_Here._ Duh. Shut up." That worked too.


	3. In which coins are counterfeit

She sits where he points, at the tiny kitchen table, and after a second of staring, he turns to pull two mugs out of a box and boil water for cocoa. (He doesn't ask if she likes cocoa. It's what's left.) "Here." And then he sits, and doesn't talk. So she does.

The Teen Terror. The downsides to making bubble-gum and pink hair your trademark. How easy it is to fake your own death. Twice. That sounds flighty. Penny wasn't flighty, was she?

Billy drinks his cocoa, and sets it down again without flinching. Or taking his eyes off her.

"I didn't plan to; everything happened so fast and - how would you even _start_ breaking up with Captain Hammer?"

Billy blinks, startled. But no, that was a rhetorical question, and he ought to say something sympathetic or shrug, not freeze, but it's too late. "Billy?"

"Uh - nothing at all. Something totally different I was thinking about." She smiles tentatively, hoping to prompt some response, but he's not taking her cues yet. She takes a breath (not touching the drink) and forges on.

"I wanted to make a difference. And maybe collecting signatures on a sidewalk isn't good enough, but compared to pink hair and Rollerblades, it - "

He breaks in. "It's not about the costumes, you know. Or committing crimes. It's upsetting the status quo, shaking people up and making them _think_ for once." He pauses, then concludes: "You'd have better luck bashing people over the head with your clipboard."

"That's... really awful, Billy."

"Yeah, people are great." He does smile, now more or less. "Do you know how many people ~like Doctor Horrible? They don't listen, any more than anyone else, they just - "

"I saw the fansites."

He raises his hands: there you go.  
"Billy, are you okay?"  
He flinches when he interrupts, but that only makes it harsher. "You know, no-one calls me that now." "I do."

He looks away, at the pile of boxes, trashbags, metal suitcases. Another day, and he'd be installed in his new lab. No forwarding address. Almost-missed connection: it must mean something. "You're not Penny."

"I think I am Penny," she says, earnest. "I think I'm very good at being Penny."

"Yeah." And here's where he strips her down to where she's a clone or robot or deranged fan, and not Penny at all. Here's where he destroys the sick make-believe dead girl who knocked on his door. Here's where Dr. Horrible finds out who his new worst enemy is.

"I'm glad you're back," Billy says, and means it.


End file.
